Network equipment, such as router, VPN router, hub, server and other network enabled devices, may not be able to communicate through Internet Protocol (IP) if configuration of the network equipment is incorrect. As some of the network equipment is able to execute commands received through a SMS message, the commands can be used to configure and manage the network equipment. It is also common for network equipment to report errors and status to a management application running remotely through SMS messages. It is also well known to those skilled in the art that mobile network operators have been using Over-The-Air (OTA) to update or change data in smart cards (subscriber identity module (SIM) card or Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC)), without having to reissue the cards. OTA enables a mobile network operator to introduce new services or to modify content of smart cards in a rapid and cost-effective way. In one example, it has been demonstrated that a mobile phone's email account setting can be configured via SMS.
However, network equipment is usually identified with hostname or serial number. Therefore, a network administrator needs to manually record the phone number associated with the SIM card which is embedded with the network equipment. Also, the network administrator needs to manually send out SMS messages to configure the network equipment in order to make the network equipment reachable through IP. When there is a large number of network equipment to be configured through SMS, the management issues could become a time consuming task for the network administrator. Furthermore, if the network equipment is not embedded with interface to receive SMS message, the network equipment cannot be configured directly through SMS message. The present invention provides methods and systems to reduce the burden on a network administrator for configuring network equipment, particularly when the network equipment does not have a valid Internet Protocol (IP) address for receiving configurations.